I think the education and knowledge that you acquire both during your studies and continuing professional education are fantastic.

At the start of my career when I worked for one of the Big 4 I spent several years in the Audit department and this was a great opportunity to find out how a variety of different companies worked.

Sometimes though it has to be said that the term “auditor” doesn’t always have the most exciting of images to the general public. People may think that an auditor is merely somebody who checks other people’s work.

To be honest though a simple piece of rebranding whereby “auditors” were known as “financial detectives” would go a long way to removing some of the negative perceptions that some people have in terms of the excitement of the profession and could create a whole new generation who want to become auditors financial detectives.

Now, whilst most people have heard of the term “auditor” a lot of people don’t really fully appreciate how it works.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) have got a website called “True and Fair” which in their own words aims to “help you find out anything you would like to know about the process known as audit – or to use its full title “Audit of Financial Statements”.”

I think it’s an excellent site and if you are an auditor and want friends or family to find out what your job entails then you should direct them to it (although admittedly if you’re on a first date with somebody and they ask you what you do then maybe say you’re a financial detective).

For any of you that are attempting an ACCA or CIMA paper with an auditing content it also makes for very good background reading.

It’s amazing how much you know. Whether you’re fully qualified or part qualified the professional exams with ACCA and CIMA are very comprehensive and as such anybody who has passed exams has proved that they have the ability to learn, comprehend and explain various technical topics.

As we progress through our studies we soon start to take certain things for granted. Take debits and credits for example. Ask any qualified accountant which side debits and credits go and they will tell you (hopefully!) without even thinking.

I was recently teaching a group that were new to the joys of double entry. Some of them were initially finding it a bit of a struggle to remember which side the debit and credit went.

A couple of quick memory techniques for anyone starting out on double entry bookkeeping which will help you remember that debits go on the left and credits on the right:

1. AC/DC

Think of the Australian rock band AC/DC or the electrical system AC/DC and then remember that A/C’s = D’s and C’s [Accounts = Debits (on the left) and Credits (on the right)].

2. The driving reminder.

WARNING – I’d only recommend that you use this is you’re from one of the countries that drive on the left such as the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Malaysia and South Africa (there are other countries that drive on the left but for brevity sake I won’t list them all here!)

If you think that you Drive on the left but Crash on the right then it should help you remember that you Debit on the left but Credit on the right.

Again, it’s probably not worth using this memory technique if you’re from one of those countries that drive on the right!

Have you ever dropped a cup of coffee at work? What about spilling a glass of water?

Maybe a more interesting question to ask a forklift truck driver that (currently) works for the Kerry Logistics in Australia is “have you ever dropped a container full of 462 cases of a customer’s wine that were worth £664,000 and all the bottles were smashed?”

Unfortunately for this unlucky forklift truck driver the answer is yes.

The container held 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz bottles of wine produced by winemaker Sparky Marquis which sell for £122 each.

Mr Marquis told reporters that he was “gut wrenched” that the wine bottles had been smashed. The container held one third of his winery’s annual production and was destined for delivery to the United States.

There are two important business lessons to be learnt from this.

Firstly, always make sure that valuable items are insured. Sensibly the wine was insured so the winemaker won’t be out of pocket.

Secondly, there’s no harm in having a sense of humour.

Mr Marquis was quoted as saying that when the logistics company opened up the container “they said it was like a murder scene.” With a touch of classic Australian humour he added “but it smelled phenomenal”

Author Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote “Wine is bottled poetry”.

I can imagine the words that came out of the forklift driver’s mouth when the container was dropped were anything but poetry.

Gone are the days when auditors were manually checking and ticking lots of pieces of paper. Today’s auditing techniques involve significant use of computers.

But how far can this computer use go? Will they be able to predict when accounting fraud is going to take place as opposed to tracking transactions that have already occurred?

The film Minority Report starring Tom Cruise was based around software that could predict when a crime was going to happen and the culprits would be arrested before they actually committed the crime. Although this film seemed well and truly within the realms of science fiction, two police forces in the UK have recently begun trials of a sophisticated computer software package which aims to predict where and when future crimes are likely to occur.

The software is known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) and is used to identify potential crime hotspots based on a variety of data including crime reports, offender profiles and strangely enough even weather forecasts.

Once these upcoming crime hotspots have been identified then the police can allocate resources accordingly.

The system is produced by IBM and the UK tests are based on a successful roll out of the software in the US by the Memphis police force which resulted in a reduction of serious crime by 30%.

Back to auditing though and will the next step be predicting when a fraud is likely to occur using statistical analysis based on industry, profit movements, director’s personal life and spending habits (plus the weather of course)?

Given the reliability of some computers though, one thing for sure is that is if you happen to live in a town called “Syntax Error” then you may have a surprise visit from a Tom Cruise lookalike with a briefcase and a calculator.

February 28, 2013

https://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.png00Steve Crossmanhttps://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.pngSteve Crossman2013-02-28 08:49:392013-02-28 08:49:39Will auditors become more like Tom Cruise in the future? Well, if I was to make a prediction...

Fast food is big business but for Subway, the world’s largest restaurant chain with 38,000 restaurants in 100 countries, something isn’t quite big enough.

Subway is famous for their “Footlong” sandwiches whose name implies should be a foot long (12 inches / 30 cm).

Their “Footlong” has been the backbone of their advertising for a number of years and any company’s advertising should be accurate and shouldn’t be misleading.

Well up step Australian Subway customer Matt Corby who purchased a Footlong and measured it before eating it. He then took a photo and posted it on Subway’s Facebook page with the request “subway pls respond”.

The photo is shown above and as can clearly be seen the Footlong isn’t in fact a foot but is 1 inch short at 11 inches.

Was this evidence that Subway had been deliberately misleading their customers by calling it a Footlong when it should have been called an “11 inch long”?

Does the extra inch matter?

Well, things took off quickly on Facebook and there were soon more than 100,000 likes and over 5,000 comments to Matt’s post. The shock discovery that the Footlong was an inch short of bread soon spread around the world.

Subway quickly supplied the following statement to the Chicago Tribune newspaper:

“We have redoubled our efforts to ensure consistency and correct length in every sandwich we serve. Our commitment remains steadfast to ensure that every Subway Footlong sandwich is 12 inches at each location worldwide.”

Is this going to be a good enough solution to the problem of the missing inch of bread?

Unfortunately for Subway within hours a number of lawsuits were filed in America in connection with the missing inch.

One of the lawsuits filed by Mr Buren from Chicago for example is claiming that the Footlong sandwich product is false advertising and as a result he is suing the company for $5 million.

Now, I’m an accountant and not a lawyer but if he’s successful the $5 million will buy an awful lot of 1 inch pieces of bread…

January 24, 2013

https://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.png00Steve Crossmanhttps://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.pngSteve Crossman2013-01-24 15:19:412013-01-24 15:19:41When is a foot not a foot?

I can therefore say in all truthfulness and honesty that I think Ernst & Young is a great company.

They have some tremendous people working for them and the students I’ve met over the years have all been fantastic.

If I’m really honest and truthful though I have to say that in my opinion there is a bit of a question mark over some of the performances in the video below.

The video was apparently taken at an EY recruitment day event and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you think that EY did a good job on the song-writing side of things and whether the employees that joined in with the singing, hand clapping and swaying with such rhythmic precision should stick to doing consulting and client work.

Now to be fair it has to be said that the recruitment event where the EY song was filmed was held 12 years ago so things have no doubt changed since then with the recruitment techniques used. It’s not clear though whether there was a slump in people applying for positions with EY 11 years ago.

Now, all of you that have just had a great weekend and are reading this in the office on a Monday morning, join together and start singing “Oh Happy Days, Oh Happy Days…”

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Here’s an interesting question. If you resign from your job, what should your resignation letter look like?

Should it be simple, brief and straight to the point or should it be sent to the whole office and include various accusations about your boss including a certain, how shall we say it but, adult liaison in a meeting room with a colleague?

Well if your name is Kieran Allen then the second option appears to be the correct answer.

Mr Allen used to work for MEC, one of the leading media agencies in London. Yesterday he resigned and his resignation letter contains some pretty juicy accusations.

Now whilst this isn’t the first resignation letter that contains some juicy accusations it is the first resignation letter with juicy accusations that has gone viral on the Internet and as a result has been seen by millions around the world.

To avoid a knock at the door from some lawyers, I’ll keep the manager’s name anonymous (although if anyone wants to see the full letter then a simple search on the Internet will reveal it!) but Mr Allen claimed that he left MEC after 2 1/2 years of “loyal service” because of the treatment he received from his manager.

Mr Allen claimed he was forced to take time off work due to stress after being overloaded with work by the manager and he claimed the manager made him feel like a complete outsider on his return.

We’ve all been overloaded with work at some stage or other so this is initial claim isn’t that exciting.

The more interesting accusations though were when he claimed in his letter that the manager “regularly made sexist and other bigoted remarks” and “took a female colleague out for a drink on the day he interviewed her, then took her back to the MEC offices that night and had sexual relations with her in the meeting room on the 3rd floor”.

Mr Allen then went on to say that all of these allegations were “common knowledge throughout the team”.

Some people will applaud Mr Allen for his resignation letter whilst others (no doubt including his manager) will say that he should have kept his issues to himself.

Either way there are some serious lessons to be learnt from all of this. For example, it’s probably advisable to make sure you knock on the door of the meeting room on the 3rd floor at MEC before opening it…

September 26, 2012

https://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.png00Steve Crossmanhttps://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.pngSteve Crossman2012-09-26 15:24:532012-09-26 15:24:53Is this the best or worst resignation letter ever?

In summary, Mr. Kabir failed an exam twice and at a meeting to discuss terminating his employment contract with Deloitte he produced a forged doctor’s note.

Deloitte let him sit the exam again and he passed this time. He then had a further 3 exams to sit and you guessed it he failed all 3.

At the next meeting to discuss things with Deloitte he claimed that he failed due to the ill health of his mother. He then produced a second forged doctor’s note from another doctor claiming his mother was suffering from ill health.

Proving that as well as being a pretty rubbish accountant he was also pretty bad at forging letters, the forged letter from the second doctor was exactly the same as the forged letter from the first doctor with the exception of only 4 words!

It’s probably no surprise to you that Mr. Kabir is now no longer working with Deloitte and the accounting body he was sitting his exams with (ICAEW) have published their report on the disciplinary action they took against him.

Again, it’s probably no surprise that he was “declared unfit to become a member of ICAEW”.

There’s no news yet whether Mr. Kabir is planning a successful career as a bank note forger…

September 10, 2012

https://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.png00Steve Crossmanhttps://www.theexpgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/styleguide-EXP-4.pngSteve Crossman2012-09-10 10:27:102012-09-10 10:27:10Should this former Deloitte accountant become a doctor?

Anyone that works within the international arena of accounting will be aware of the discussions over the years about the convergence between IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and US GAAP (US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

Whilst there are similarities between the two sets of accounting rules, importantly there are also differences.

The majority of the G20 (in effect, the 20 largest economies in the world) already use IFRS but over in America they are pretty attached to the US GAAP rules.

The IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) has been working closely over the years with its US counterpart, the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) to minimise the difference between the two sets of rules.

Following an announcement last week by the US Securities and Exchange Commission which failed to include a clear action plan about adopting international accounting rules, it looks like the IFRS supporters may be losing a bit of patience.

Michael Prada, the chairman of the trustees that oversee the IASB was critical of this lack of an action plan and was quoted as saying:

“While recognising the right of the SEC to determine the method and timing for incorporation of IFRSs in the United States, we regret that the staff report is not accompanied by a recommended action plan for the SEC. Given the achievements of the convergence programme inspired by repeated calls of the G20 for global accounting standards, a clear action plan would be welcome.

For the benefit of both US and international stakeholders, the Trustees look forward to the SEC resolving the continued uncertainty regarding the US’s commitment to global accounting standards.”

Or to put it in less diplomatic wording, “for goodness sake can you please get on with it”.

In summary it looks like there’s not going to be true global accounting standards in the immediate future.

One thing for sure though is that IFRSs seemed to be going from strength to strength. In the words of Hans Hoogervorst, the Chairman of the IASB:

“IFRSs have already achieved critical mass as international standards and with more than two thirds of the G20 now on board, the momentum behind them becoming global accounting standards is irreversible. We are confident in our mission to achieve a single set of high quality global accounting standards and we continue to work to serve investors and other users of IFRSs across the world.”

So all that hard work in learning the various IFRSs in your professional exams looks like it will be worth it.

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